the Vials of Sorrow
by kamion
Summary: after the dramatic event on the Astronmy Tower there was only one place to go for Severus Snape.


She was a small woman, delicate and frail, her aged face still showing the beauty of youth under fine wrinkles of sorrow, who craddled the head in her lap.  
Letting him weep.  
Letting him cry his eyes dry.  
Letting him wail his heart dry.  
Letting him fill the tiny living room with his agonising sobs only hoping that they would not penetrate downstairs to the shop.  
Small as it was, the appartment above nr 8 Knockturn Alley was not particulair sound proof, but this immense sense of loss, sorrow and guild had to flow freely and not be locked in by Silencing Spells.

It was the only thing she could do for him,  
The only thing she ever had felt able to do for him.  
Letting him cry.  
Letting him drop down his guards, he had learned to shield himself with at an age far too young.  
A child of five should not witness a loving grandfather fall to his death, desperately trying to cushion the fall for his grandson. They never found out if that failing broom was jinxed or just malfunctioning.  
A child of five should not be accused by his father to be the cause of the death of a grandfather. Although never spoken out loud, it had been written on Septimius' face all over

If you not pressed my father into teaching flying so eagerly, he now still would be alive

Irresponsible and untrue. Salonius had been 90 years old, maybe not that old for a pureblood wizard, but he always felt his long years in the tropics as counting double.  
As she now felt the years without her daughter counting twice heavy.

A child of five should not be told to bear the loss of a beloved relative like a man and a pureblood. Certainly not when he was neither of those.

He had been a child in a house too big and too cold.

A child in a family too old to see beyond the need of maintaining the line.

In a marriage that held too less love to warm the heart of an insecure child.

Being the reason and not the result of a choice, made well considered, but that did not work out as intended.

Letting him cry was the only thing she could do for her grandson.

It was her only way of backing up a long line of wrong choices.

She had stood behind her daughter when the girl fell in love with the Muggle, called Tobias.  
She had stood behind her daughter when she married him against the wish of her father.  
Too soon they both had become widows.

She had stood behind her daughter when she married again ensuring a future for her child.  
She had stood behind that daughter when she walked out of that marriage taking her child with her.  
She had stood behind that same daughter when she returned to that marriage of love turned cold.  
And she had stood behind her grandson when he refused to return to the father he now knew was not his sire.

Letting him cry his anger and frustration then, while staying the rest of the summer in the cramped apartment at Knockturn had at least prevented him cursing his mother and his father for deceiving him.  
For letting him believe he was pure-blood  
For raising him as the heir to an old pure-blood dynasty still steadying in decay.  
For telling him he was a half-blood.

He had come back and she let cry in her lap.

The time he found his first love and he had lost that love due to the actions of his first enemy. .

The time he found second love and was betrayed by it, drawn to a side that was his natural enemy.

The time he saw the reality behind that _Shtoenk_ from nr 13B, working for Borgin and Burkes, he had worshipped as the salvation of the Wizarding World.

The time he felt he failed to fill the footsteps of grandfather Salonius, whose deeds at Durmstrang had enabled Dumbledore to defeat Grindlewald.

But not the time her daughter died, the very same day the boy now sulking in the shop downstairs was born. Too much of crying her own she had to do, letting her brothers pray the _Kaddish_. Would he ever pray the _Kaddish_ for a long line of lost loves and lives when his great-uncles were gone? They were so old already.

Would he ever be free of the guild that his choice had depleted the life energy her daughter once had?  
Would he ever accept that his mother's strength in will power far extended her strength in body?  
Would he ever see the incapability his parents had to express the love they did feel for each other?

He had come back and she let cry in her lap.

The time owls were flocking and stars were shooting while wizards and witches celebrated when the Shadow had fled.  
Unable to pay the debt he had cried over the death of an enemy and rival.  
Unable to convince them who was traitor and who was not.

For ten years and more he did not come himself. Only his letters came. Through bitter and sullen she knew him safe and at a place suiting him best. A place that did right at his talents and skills.

But then after 12 years the ghosts of youth, they all came back  
The first love, the first enemy and also the traitor.  
Then again he came back to her and she let him cry in his lap about achased away first love that refused to die incarcerted in a heart turned to stone. She knew it would never die, the moment she had laid eyes on the little one. So many years ago when he came storming up in to her room begging permission to gave his newfound friend a pommegrate. A torn shopping bag and a small soft-eyed boy picking up the runaway fruit had cemented a love for life then a second time denied. Only then she could do more then just having him cry out his bitter closed heart.  
" Bring him pommegrates." She had ordered, "and you will find the healing you need fighting for the same cause." An order he had followed like the demurred child he had ever stayed in her eyes. An order followed just in time to close ranks facing the Shadow on its return. Stakes still set too high to go public about a relation rekindled after so many years.  
Forced to face an animosity still vivid barely able accepting that still was his lover's best friend.

Would she ever see again the unguarded childlike joy in their eyes bent over ice cream at Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor?  
Would she ever see again the unguarded adolescent love in their faces trying to pronounce proper the prayer _Baruch Ata Adonai Elohenoe_ while the candles were lit for Chanukah, devouring latkes and soefganijoth afterwards?

Still so young and so much older, the love and the joy no longer unguarded.

Chanukah memories drifted back to larger houses and larger families coming together.  
Drifted back to her last Chanukah on the Continent, before she was send to safety and before the kristalls were shattered in the night.  
As all were shattered, the ones that stayed behind.  
Drifted back to the fear caused by the thunder of boots announcing the raids of Grindlewalds goons in the gaz, dragging from their homes those Wizards and Witches their Muggles mates in crime did nor dare to touch.  
Drifted back to the day she feared her only grandson would show up in that same kind uniform revived, black as the night wearing that insignia of the skull, the bone and the wand.  
No uniform, but a black robe.  
No insignia, but a Dark Mark it had been, the dread however the same.  
The dread coming back the day she got Owled he after all those year that he got the post that would finish his haven no longer safe. And as many before he did not even finish the last term.

" He begged me, grannalah, he begged and pleaded me to do it . When he gave me the assignement he made me remember the promise I made.  
And I hated him for begging, as I hated him for making me promise.  
He begged me , grannalah and I hated him making me hate myself for keeping that promise."

"A heavy prize to pay for those years of protection, my dear Seveleh."  
How sallow that fair skin had become, how limp those shiny black bangs.

" A prize we haggled about all year, but he would not budge, the names I called him by, accusing him to have betrayed my trust in him. He was much more, so much greater then all those I trusted before. Grannalah, why is my trust always met with betrayal? "

" Seveleh , my dear _kaddishel_, have I ever dishonor your love and your trust?"

" No, grannalah. But Remy denied his love by telling the brat a bland lie during Christmas."

"So even soft-eyed Remy is driving you closer and closer in the trust of that Shtoenk. But will it be close enough to repay the debt? You cannot have HIM sense your sorrow now, Seveleh. How else will you get close to the neccesairy information? "

" But the Dark Lord is so powerfull and I am so weak, so tired."

" Don't be a _Shmok, du bist shtark vi a Perd_! Next to that _Shtoenk_ you are the strongest Wizard now." She took a small vial from her pocket and he shuddered.

" Must it be done? It is like splitting my soul."

" It must be done and it may be as splitting your heart, but not your soul. We have done it before. You know it will can only make you stronger…."

"…. But colder and harsher and filled with bland indifference."

" Yes, but still nothing is lost ." She said firmly and resolute while she caught the last tears from his gaunt cheek filling the vial.

" There! Done ! I will saveguard your sorrow till the time you need it, when the times are save for you to mourn the death of Albus you can open one of the Vials of Sorrow I kept for you."

Snape rose retaking the rigid and harsh attitude his students knew too well: "I don't feel any need to mourn Dumbledore, why should I feel remorse about what was inevitable from the moment I made the Unbreakable Vow to protect that boy downstairs. Did you use a spell on me again, Grandmother Cornelia ? I did not hear anything, but I feel…."

" Oh my dear Seveleh." she smiled." Who was it that taught you the basics of Legilimency and Non-verbals Spell?"

" My excuses, Grandmother I forgot."

" It is alright my _kaddishel_, Oh don't forget to Oblivate the boy when you both leave the shop."

" Of course not Grandmother, Draco will remember nothing of this visit and nothing of your existence. He will not be able to tell the Dark Lord anything about our relation."  
He stiffly kissed her extended frail hand to depart, halfway the staircase Snape turned: " oh Grandmother, one more request."

" Yes, my dear."

" Don't call me _kaddishel_, I not 8 years old anymore."

" Yes, my dear." She said to the disappearing head.

Yes my dear _kaddishel_, she sighted silently hearing the sound of the shopbell ringing as a sign Severus Snape and Draco Malfoy had left nr 8 Knockturn Alley, the shabby location of Schwabe's Quabbalistic Artifacts. No one would be surprised to would turn up briefly at Knockturn Alley after what had happened that night at Hogwarts, tying up loose ends at Borgin and Burkes would be just one of the reasons.

No one had ever connected the quelerant two old Quabbalistic wizards wearing tradional beards and whiskers, with the mine-owning wizard Alwin Prince or realised that, she, Cornelia Schwabe, was his widow.  
Severus' sorrow was save in her hands, now held by her brothers when the tears Severus no longer can shed come flowing from her eyes.

She knows she will cry for him as long as he needs.  
She knows she will visit the funeral to come, the funeral he cannot attent, being just another old small Witch, delicate and frail, unconspicuous in a crowd.


End file.
